Having Everything Right by Kim R. Stafford

Abstract

Reviews 83 stupidity, greed) and their outlook is almost without exception one of opti­ mism, faith in the individual and hope that change can be made sensibly and not too swiftly so that our wide spaces can remain open to those who come with hopes and dreams of making a new life. The space of this review does not permit extensive sampling of the inter­ views, but let me report that of the 25 people whose stories and faces grace this cleanly printed book, 17 are men, 8 are women, and roughly an equal number come from each of the three states. Among the names are personalities that will be familiar to natives of the area as persons who have been active in local politics, conservation issues, journalism, women’s rights, farming issues, industry—many being persons whose roots go back several generations in the West—Belle Winestine, Reed Hansen, Perry Swisher, Gretchen and Harry Billings, Colleen Cabot and Jack Pugh, to name a few. The book is graced with striking black and white photographs of the landscape by Mike McClure, as well as fine portraits of each interviewee. Reading these open minds reaffirms the values and attitudes I have come to regard as the West’s richest resource. HARALD WYNDHAM Blue Scarab Press, Pocatello, Idaho Having Everything Right. By Kim R. Stafford. (Lewiston: Confluence Press, 1986. 208 pages, $14.95.) Having Everything Right is a book of many sides, shapes, and colors. Ostensibly, it is a simple group of essays that focus on Northwest tradition and history interpreted in experiences of the author, but it quickly begins to live a life of its own, pulsing with three-dimensional characters, places, and a point of view that for want of a better term, is eschatological: barriers of time melt until all time is the present. A Siuslaw Indian woman’s ageless Bear tale recorded in 1911, the timbers shaped by a farmer in 1902, his grandmother’s wedding recollections, these things connect Kim Stafford with the past and present; he belongs to them and they belong to him. The strength of Stafford’s point of view grows silently. His characters are the meek and poor in spirit—Gypsy Slim, a Portland vagrant, Abe Johnson, the wild bird feeder, Tubby Beers, the historian of the primitive life. They are largely without position and power, and often they are outcasts. Yet they hold the keys to man’s history. They understand their relationship to the earth and other beings, alive and dead. It is the rest of us that sleep the sleep of the damned, cut off from our past in bitter concentric circles, without feeling or charity for things that lived or live outside our field of vision. It is a powerful point of view that is softly stated, without rancor or accusation. The words themselves are of great beauty, as carefully crafted as 84 Western American Literature a poem. The result is a haunting book, one whose ideas return with clear pas­ sion long after they are read. Having Everything Right received the 1986 Western States Book Awards Citation for Excellence. STEVEN PUGMIRE Seattle, Washington ‘What Thou Lovest Well Remains’: 100 Years of Ezra Pound. Edited by Richard Ardinger. (Boise: Limberlost Press, 1986. 137 pages, $9.95 paper.) This collection of twenty-six essays and poems commemorates the cen­ tennial of Pound’s birth in Hailey, Idaho, a western boom and bust town that only grudgingly admits it was Pound’s first home. Only four selections have been published previously—Ferlinghetti’s “Pound at Spoleto,” Ginsberg’s “Encounters with Ezra Pound,” a poem by William Stafford, and James Laughlin’s essay on letters he received from Pound. These four embody the principle which also guides most of the contributions—a writer’s personal response to challenges posed by Pound. A letter written by Isabel Pound from Hailey five months before her son Ezra’s birth projects the only female voice that speaks in this strongly mascu­ line book, whose contributors often reveal as much about themselves as they do about Pound. The purpose of the collection is not scholarly. Quite the contrary. Some contributors are as violently anti-academy as...